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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23222713">Xeranthemum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully'>leiascully</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The X-Files</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Immortality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2019-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2019-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:26:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>204</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23222713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Immortality is a perversion of the promise of the afterlife.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Xeranthemum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Timeline: n/a, references to "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"<br/>A/N: From a tumblr prompt</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“How do I die?” she remembers asking.</p><p>“You don’t.”</p><p>It haunts her.  She thinks about it in church, when the father talks about life eternal.  She thinks about it every time she and Mulder get into a bad situation.  She tries not to rely on it.  When she gets cancer, she studiously keeps it out of the pages she writes to Mulder.</p><p>She’s intrigued, of course, and hopeful, and terrified.  She can imagine outliving her mother, now, but she doesn’t want to.  She can imagine outliving Mulder, though it makes her breath come short and her heart thud.  She can’t imagine outliving everyone she’s ever known.  Her brother Charlie.  Her nephew Matthew.  Her grandnieces and grandnephews, someday, maybe.  </p><p>Immortality is a perversion of the promise of the afterlife.  She’s sure Clyde Bruckman didn’t see it that way.  After all his visions of death, it must have been a relief to see her.  It must have comforted him to have her as a vision of eternity after every tawdry, sordid, bleak end he’d glimpsed.  He must have felt like he was giving her a gift.  She wishes she could pass it on to someone else.</p><p>She kneels and wonders when she’ll ask God for release.</p>
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